Numerous devices directed to the field spraying of agricultural chemicals exist in the art. Such conventional devices, however, lack inventive features responsive to the current needs of the sprayer-using market. The present invention is directed towards meeting these needs.
Field spraying devices are used in the development of agricultural chemicals as well as by the farming community. In the research process, for example, a series of screening tests are employed to determine the efficacy of compounds as crop protection or enhancement products. Once a compound is found to be active under laboratory and greenhouse conditions, tests are conducted in the field to more accurately determine the compound's potential as a commercial product and to determine optimum application conditions. The following illustrates generally employed field testing procedures.
In a typical field spray test program, a relatively small area is subdivided into test plots assuring adequately uniform conditions of crops, soil, weather, cultivation and the like. A test plot may be ten (10) feet (3.0 meters) by twenty-five (25) feet (7.6 meters) in dimension of which about five (5) feet (1.5 meters) by twenty (20) feet (6.1 meters) is the active test area. As an example, forty (40) such small plots may be combined into a 5.times.8 array or test field. This is shown in FIG. 1. Each plot within the test field requires a designated treatment. Ordinarily, due to the replications needed in statistically-designed experiments, several of the plots require the same treatment. In the past a sprayer-rigged tractor would have its spray tank loaded with the spray material prescribed for the several test plots requiring the same treatment and be driven over the test field spraying from the nozzles on the single spray boom only on the appropriate plots. The spray rig would then be returned to its base, flushed and reloaded with a new treatment. In FIG. 1, the arrowed path represents the route the tractor would follow to spray the same treatment on each of the four (4) test plots which are indicated by a dotted line. The number of such plots is typical but arbitrarily chosen for illustration only. The figure shows a field of 40 plots in which 10 treatments are to be evaluated with each treatment replicated four times.
A farmer, planting a number of different crops many requiring the application of distinct protection or enhancement products, follows a somewhat similar procedure in spray treating the crops.
This spraying procedure, necessitated by conventional devices, is time consuming, uneconomical, risks misapplication, requires excessive path length, and is overly disruptive to the soil and vegetation. The present invention which addresses these and other problems, will greatly assist the agricultural chemicals industry in its efforts to effectively handle the many experimental compounds requiring field testing each year, and the farming community in its attempt to provide us with an ever more abundant food supply.